Plot synopsisBack in his early
20s, Jesse had a one-night stand in Vienna with a French girl named
Celine. Nine years later, Jesse finds himself in Paris, talking about
the best-selling novel that he wrote based upon that night. Now married
to another woman and with a young son as well, Jesse's family life seems
like it's as much a success as his career. In actuality, though, Jesse's
still reliving that perfect night in Vienna, wondering why things didn't
work out, trying to convince himself he's doing the honorable thing by
staying married to a woman who he likes all right, but doesn't love.
He's finishing up his final talk on the last stop of his European tour,
dodging questions about whether the book is based on a real girl or not,
when he looks up and sees her, standing shyly in the back of the store.
He quickly finishes up answering his audience's questions, and walks
over to the woman he fell in love with almost a decade ago, and hasn't
seen since. Celine and Jesse head to a café and then on a walk around
the city, and after the initial awkwardness fades away, they're talking
about politics and changing ideals, ambition and sex and relationships;
they're debating and flirting, reminiscing and playing what ifs. Sure,
she has a boyfriend; he's set to catch a plane back to the States, where
his wife and kid are waiting. But as they let the facades down and start
really talking, the only thing that seems to matter for now is that
they're here, in Paris, together, falling in love all over again.

Review
Don't get me wrong: I loved Richard Linklater's Before
Sunrise, the 1994 prequel to Before Sunset in which the
characters of Jesse and Celine first meet. But I have to admit that I
can sort of see my boy's point when he says that the characters in that
film are a tad, well, annoying. They're overly earnest in their
convictions, and their intellectualism teeters precariously on the brink
of pretentious. They've experienced so little and talk like they know so
much; they're just getting to that point where they sense how clueless
about life they actually are, but aren't quite comfortable enough with
that realization to accept and admit it to the rest of the world.
Basically, they're quintessentially gen-x, and while I loved the
authenticity of their characterizations and could see so much of myself
in both, I can understand how some folks might find all that
self-absorbed introspection hard to stomach. This, then, is exactly what
makes Before Sunset an even better movie than its predecessor. Before
Sunset follows the same freewheeling structure and style of Before
Sunrise, but the difference now is that the characters are more
mature. They're still smart, and fascinating, and passionate. But they
seem so much more comfortable in their own skin now; they don't sound
like they're worried about whether what they say will make them seem
clever or cool or deep, especially once they get over their initial
pretending-everything's-perfect-catching-up. While that first film was
about young romance in all its giddy, glorious, naïve idealism, this
movie is about love -- both its disappointments and its sublimity. It's
about what happens after you spend the perfect night with the perfect
person of your dreams, and things don't go so perfectly after all. Which
is what makes the movie's abrupt, open-ended final scene particularly
wonderful: it leaves you hanging at exactly the moment when everything
seems possible. What could be more romantic than that? This is a movie
about growing up, yet staying hopeful.